DIGITAL CAMERAS - WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET.

                 DIGITAL CAMERAS - WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET.

If you're having trouble masking glass or other transparent items, check out this blog where I show you how to mask off a bottle and replace it with a new background. In this course, you'll also learn how to employ blending modes and layer masks. If there is at least one tip or method that you like, make sure you read all the way to the end to prevent missing any of them.

I'd like to express my gratitude to is for sponsoring today's Photoshop tutorial. I'll be working on my is creation 15 laptop, which has been tested and optimized to run Adobe software, including Photoshop.

We want to chop away the picture, but there's also transparency; the liquids are translucent, but the top portion of the bottle isn't, so we'll have to find out how to mask this while retaining the transparency so we can see the backdrop. To accomplish so, I'll utilize blending modes to split the components into different layers.

Allow me to demonstrate how to do this. To begin, I'll create a new group that will house all of my bottle layers. I'll just name this group bottle, then pick and drag the bottle layer into the group. I'm going to make a layer mask to confine the bottle from here, and then I'll simply click OK.

In older versions of Photoshop, you could use the quick selection tool to mask the image, but in newer versions, you can use the object selection tool or even the select subject option from the select menu, which will analyze the image and select the main subject using artificial intelligence called Adobe Sensei.

Subject Notice that I have a selection around my bottle; now click on the group and make a mask with the group selected; note that we applied the layer mask to the group rather than the individual layer; this is done so that a single layer mask can govern all of the layers included inside the group.

It's a more efficient way to operate now that you've picked the bottle layer. Press ctrl j on Windows or command j on Mac to duplicate the layer three times. I'll rename the layer shadows, highlights, and color by double-clicking on its name. Then I'll turn off all of the layers.

And I'll get started on the shadows. I'm going to desaturate the layer, which means I'll take away all of the color. This can be done by hitting ctrl shift u on Windows or command shift d on a Mac, and as you can see, it eliminates all color. I'm simply going to retain the shadows of this layer on this layer, and I'm going to utilize a blending mode. If I choose the mixing mode drop-down menu,

Blending modes, and in this example, we'll utilize the darken blending modes, which eliminate the highlights while leaving the shadows alone. In this scenario, multiply is the ideal blending mode, and as you can see, we just maintain the shadows. Let's go on to the highlights layer, which I'll turn on.

On the Mac, hit command shift u to desaturate the layer. Next, we'll utilize a blending mode to eliminate the shadows while keeping just the highlights. I'll choose screen from the blending mode drop-down menu, and in this instance, we'll utilize the blending modes in the lighten category, which conceal shadows while preserving highlights.

The bottle is now translucent, with shadows and highlights, as you can see. Finally, I'll activate the color layer, but this time I'm not going to be saturated because I don't want the luminosity from the layers below to effect this layer, so I'll set the blending mode to color, which maintains both the hue and luminosity from the layers below.

By doing so, we've effectively isolated the backdrop from the bottle, which looks wonderful. Look below in the description for a link to my lesson where I go through each individual blending mode and how it works, so be sure to check that out as well. link in the following description

Now all we have to do is fine-tune these changes, so go into the shadows layer and make a new levels adjustment layer, then clip it to the layer below by clicking on this button. This adjustment layer will only influence the shadows layer, as shown by the down pointing arrow, and you may activate it by clicking on it.

This is a symbol You can see how changing the gamma affects the bottle and how the shadows brighten and disappear or darken and return as the gamma is changed. So it's up to you; you can tweak this layer as much as you want to get the look you want; in this case, I'm going to darken it a bit.

With the highlights layer selected, go to the new adjustment layer icon and click on this button to choose levels clip it to the layer below, then click and drag on this slider to darken the layer, making the darker pixels invisible.

Remember that we're only interested in the specular highlights, therefore darkening the layer is the way to go. Because we've darkened the picture with this layer, it may seem much darker after you've done that, so you may need to return here and brighten it up a little bit and modify it properly so that your image looks alright. Right now, I'm going to do something.

Work on the bottle's solid sections, such as the top portion seen below. When you zoom in, you can still see some of the backdrop, which is plainly unappealing. To remedy this, go to the shadows layer, hold control (on Windows) or command (on Mac), and click the new layer icon to make a layer exactly below it, so below the shadows layer, which I'll name solid.

Because this is the region that will give me the image's solid portions, or areas that aren't transparent, you may make white your foreground color with the brush tool chosen. My background color is now white, so I can click on this icon to change it to the foreground color, or you can do the same by tapping the x key on the keyboard, and then you can change it to the background color after you have white as your foreground color.

In the forefront, there is color. By hitting the bracket keys on your keyboard, you may increase the size of your brush. I'm going to produce a bigger brush by tapping on the right bracket key, and then I'm simply going to paint with white on that region. Notice how it just restores the original pixels, and since we've applied this layer mask on the layer, I don't have to worry about remaining inside the lines.

Because we'd have to replicate the mask on each layer if we had it on an individual layer, and if we altered the mask, we'd have to modify it on all layers, which would take too long, I wanted the layer mask in the group rather than on an individual layer. It saves time to have the layer mask in the group.

Because you can zoom into the bottle and focus on places like these that should be solid but aren't, it's also a more efficient procedure. I'll simply paint in after resizing my brush using the left bracket key. Because I have harsh edges, I also want my brush to be a little softer, so I'll hold shift and touch on the left bracket key to soften my brush a little.

However, you can change the hardness in this drop-down menu, so I'm reducing the hardness to achieve softer edges so I can keep painting on these spots. I'm moving a bit fast here, but feel free to take your time with your projects if you want better outcomes; you don't have to watch me fine-tune all these little aspects.

However, once you have something that looks like this, double-click on the hand tool to resize the picture to suit the screen, and then spend time fine-tuning all of the finer elements. Everything looks great right now, particularly the shadows, highlights, and color, and if color is important to you, check out the msi creator 15 laptop, which has msi's patented true color technology.

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Click on the amazon link in the description below to discover more about the MSI Creator 15 laptop. Amazon was selling it for $500 off at the time of this video, so let's get started with the instruction. Let's take a look at the picture. What I'm going to do now is concentrate on the light that will be hitting the backdrop.

On the right, we have a shadow, and on the left, we have a highlight. You can see that the shadow is on the bottom right, suggesting that the light is coming from the left, if I change the blending mode of this layer from color to normal and then deactivate the layer mask by holding shift and clicking on it. Now that we need to get everything back to how it was, I'll activate the layer mask by holding shift and clicking on it.

Because the light is coming from the left, we'll need to change the blending mode back to color and produce a shadow on the right hand side. Because this is a bottle, light will travel through it and we'll see a little bit of the highlight here on the real surface, so we'll have to reproduce that as well.

I'm going to collapse this group, click on the background, and create a new group that'll only be the light and shadows to form that light. I'll make a new highlight layer within that group, and then use the brush tool to paint on it.

We'll need to temporarily activate the eyedropper tool and then click to assign that color as your foreground color to ensure we don't harm the inside of the bottle. Then I'll increase the size of my brush and just paint like this, so that this is the light hitting the surface.

Invert and duplicate a layer mask in Photoshop rapidly by clicking and dragging the layer mask onto another layer or group while holding alt on Windows or shift on Mac, and when I release, Photoshop duplicates and inverts the layer all at once. Because the interior of the bottle is not impacted by the brush strokes when I paint, you may now pick it and move it to another layer or group.

Simply switch to color dodge as the blending mode. Color dodge is a fascinating blending mode since it's one of eight that lets you alter opacity and fill to obtain varied effects. Because fill normally produces better results, you may lessen the fill and watch how the light intensity varies as well.

This is nice, and if we add the shadow, we can fine-tune it. To add the shadow, click on the bottle layer mask to load it as a selection while holding control on the mac. I can create a new layer and fill it with a dark color while the selection is active. On the Mac, I'm going to choose this dark brown that I see here while holding down the alt key, and maybe I'll make it a gradient.

I'm just going to fill that color that I just selected with my foreground color, so I'll press alt and backspace on Windows or option delete on the Mac to fill with the foreground color, then ctrl d command d to deselect, and I'll show you a technique for creating shadows that you probably haven't seen before.

I'm going to choose path blur from the filter blur gallery right now. Make sure the route follows the light, which should be coming from my left and moving to the right, as shown by the arrow. Then increase the speed to observe the shadow grow bigger, but bear in mind that the shadow may go in any direction, which I don't want.

I only want it to travel one way, so I'll uncheck the centered blur box, and the shadow will now just flow to the right, which is precisely what I want. You can change the endpoint speed, but I'm going to raise it because I want a little more gap between the bottle and the shadow here.

Because this part of the shadow is raised a little bit, it wouldn't be as close to the surface in reality, so I think moving the endpoint to the right a little bit helps create that illusion, so this is pretty good in this case, and I'll just press ok to commit the changes so that my shadow blends a little bit better with the surface.

I switched from normal to multiplication mode, and I think it came out great. You can easily reduce the opacity if you think the effect is too powerful. Also, I'd want more of that highlight to shine through, so I'll create a layer mask and paint with black to expose the highlight there, then lift the feather to blur it little.

I'll go back and modify my highlight and perhaps boost the fill to brighten it up a little, but it's looking really decent so far. What I'll do now is add a little blur to my highlight because I believe it's a little too crisp right now, so I'll go into filter blur gaussian blur and blur it a little more.

So I'll start with a good fill and gradually lower it to roughly 52%. Next, choose the background by clicking on it and then using the rectangle marquee tool to create a rectangular selection that covers a little more than the bottle. Something along these lines should work, and you can get to it by pressing ctrl j on a Windows computer or command j on a Mac computer.

Duplicate the selection's contents onto a new layer, as shown above, and then drag and drop it into the bottle group. When you drag and drop a layer into a group, it will go to the top of the stack, but if you hold shift while clicking and dragging, it will move to the bottom.

See how it's not perfectly aligned and looks rounded? That's what you want to do, so make sure the layer is at the bottom, then select it and press ctrl t command t to transform, right click and select warp, and simply drag these handles to distort the layer so that it looks like you're looking through glass. See how it's not completely aligned and has a rounded appearance? That's what you want to achieve.

You can manipulate the layer however you want in this case it looks pretty good so I'll click the check mark to commit the changes and actually might be a little low so I'll select the move tool and click and drag it up just a little bit something like that just so it looks like we're looking through a bottle at this point all you have to do is adjust the small details to get a more realistic look at this point all you have to do is adjust the small details to get a more realistic look at this point

Press the z key to pick the zoom tool, then click to zoom in and correct any faults on your layer mask to get a realistic look. To do so, choose your bottle group, then the layer mask, then the brush tool, and use white to show pixels that should be displayed or black to conceal pixels, like in this example.

To show the pixels that are being cut off here, I'll reduce my brush size with the left bracket key on the keyboard, then increase the hardness with this drop down, or you can use the keyboard shortcut of shift and the bracket keys on the keyboard, and simply click and drag to add to the selection, and here's the trick: you can click once and drag to add to the selection.

Hold shift and click again, and Photoshop will draw a straight line between those two points, which you can use to bring back and reveal the pixels that the artificial intelligence missed. Spend time fine-tuning your mask until you get the results you want, and obviously, spend time fine-tuning your mask until you get the results you want. After that, I'll stop the video to show you what my picture looks like.

Spend some time fine tuning it, but be assured that everything you see in this video is precisely what I accomplished; I simply spent a bit more time making it better. Check out the msi creative 15 laptop, which is built for creators but is also a well-rounded device for regular users and gamers, if you haven't already.

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My seven compositing tips for making more realistic composites are included in this video. If you click on it now, I'll see you next time.